I would think that the panic alone might be what damaged Australia to the extent it was - you have a lot of people living in the cities and if you get widespread panic that they are about to get hit that would cause a lot of damage - i.e. widespread looting, cops and firemen leaving their positions and fleeing or being overwhelmed, fires out of control -
for instance think about the large scale wild fires that Australia has had - now imagine you get large scale fires breaking out from panic and looting in the cities and no firemen to fight them - you could end up with huge areas of the cities burned out or heavily damaged without a single nuclear bomb hitting them
Now add in a single nuclear strike that takes out Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane to start that panic - and viola you have that combined with the resulting panic causing the damage to Australia that causes the government to collapse and the military to take over
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